Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read online

  “You were right to do so. It would have been foolish to resist.”

  “It was selfish. I did it to save myself from going back to Santa Marta.”

  “And why is that selfish? You didn’t choose to be a nun, and if you had gone back they would have made you a slave. I faced a choice like yours once, Giulia. My mother did what I do, only in the gutter rather than a palace. She died when I was just thirteen. I had no family, no one to take me in. I could have gone to the nuns, to be a conversa like you, scrubbing floors and doing penance for my mother’s sins, though I had no part in them and was still a virgin then. Or I could become a whore myself.” She smiled, with a strange mix of bitterness and pride. “You see what I chose.”

  “But you are not just . . . that. You have learning, and independence, and . . .” Giulia looked around the shadowy room, with its great bed and painted chests and coffered ceiling. “All this.”

  “Oh, child. A whore is a whore. The trappings change, but the act does not, nor the abuse, nor the disease, nor the tedium. I have won, perhaps, the best a whore can hope for: the right to be a whore no longer, and not to starve in my retirement. But had I been as foolish as others in my profession and lost it all, I would still rather that than live as I’d have had to live if I’d become a nun. I understand, Giulia, why you chose to break your promise to your teacher. I’m certain she would have understood as well.”

  “She was proud of how fiercely she resisted him. She would have wanted me to do the same.”

  “One must be strong to keep a secret. But stronger still, sometimes, to let it go.”

  Giulia shook her head. “I can only hope I didn’t let it go completely.”

  Sofia tilted her head. “How so?”

  “When my Maestra first gave me the recipe, I thought I had it all—the entire secret of Passion blue, just a matter of ingredients and proportions and instructions. I knew I might make a mistake in mixing it, but I thought if I was careful, if I followed the formula without fail, there was no reason why I shouldn’t create Passion blue, exactly as my Maestra did. But . . .”

  Giulia paused, searching for the words to explain the elusive insight that had come to her during the day and two long nights she’d spent as Matteo’s prisoner.

  “But I didn’t think about the different skills of different hands. Every hand has its own touch, and I think that the work of each hand is different. So it was for me. I did everything precisely as the recipe required, and my blue was beautiful. But it wasn’t Passion blue. And I don’t know if it ever will be, if ever I get the chance to try again. I think . . . well, I hope . . . it’ll be the same for Signor Moretti. He will make blue—but not my Maestra’s blue.” She drew in her breath. “Perhaps the real secret, the one even my Maestra didn’t know, is that the secret of Passion blue cannot be given.”

  They sat in silence for a time. The fire was burning low, and the corners of the chamber were lost in shadow.

  “Have you thought what you will do now?” Sofia asked at last.

  Giulia looked down at the glossy tiles of the hearth, at the tray with its empty plate. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll want to find another teacher, surely. I can help you, if you wish to disguise yourself again.”

  “I don’t know.” Giulia put her hands over her face. “Please don’t ask me to decide.”

  “Ah, Giulia. Poor girl. You need decide nothing until you wish it. You are safe here, and you may stay as long as you like.”

  “Thank you, clarissima. You’ve been so kind to me.”

  “Come.” There was a rustle of silk. Gentle hands took Giulia’s wrists, pulled her fingers away from her face. “You need to sleep.”

  Like a child, Giulia let herself be drawn to her feet. She stood while Sofia removed the clothes Matteo had given her and slipped a clean chemise over her head, made of linen almost as fine as silk. The great bed with its pile of feather coverlets was the softest thing she’d ever felt, the sheets smooth and lavender-scented.

  She felt the mattress shift as Sofia lay down beside her. She closed her eyes on the red glow of the coals in the grate, feeling the ice inside her beginning, at last, to melt.

  CHAPTER 23

  A GIRL AGAIN

  A sound pulled Giulia from sleep. She opened her eyes on an expanse of crimson: a bed-canopy.

  Sofia, she thought. I’m in Sofia’s house.

  She sat up, the heavy covers slipping from her shoulders. Through the windows flanking the fireplace she could see sunlight on the wall of the house across the alley. The noise that had roused her was Maria, bending down to replenish the fire.

  Maria straightened. Seeing Giulia was awake, she gestured to the tray that had been placed on the hearth. Giulia wondered what the silent woman thought of her transformation.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Maria inclined her head and departed. Giulia slipped out of bed, pulling the quilt with her, displacing one of Sofia’s cats, which had been curled up beside her. She wrapped herself in the quilt and sat down to eat her meal: cold meats, olives, and some sort of pickle, spicy and delicious. The cat sauntered over to join her, with a cat’s assurance of its absolute right to whatever place it happened to occupy. Giulia smoothed its silky fur. She felt calm, cleansed of emotion like a street after a hard rain. The events of the past few days were there inside her mind, but for now, in this quiet room with the cat for company, she was at peace.

  She’d just finished eating when Sofia entered, in a gown almost the exact color of her hair, which was braided around her head and caught at the back with a veil as translucent as spider-silk.

  “Good afternoon, sleepy one!”

  Giulia put down her plate and wiped her fingers on the napkin Maria had provided. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

  “You needed the rest.” Sofia knelt at Giulia’s side in a swirl of gleaming skirts. “Now, I don’t wish to press you. But you must be clothed, and while you are considering what next you will do, will you let me turn you into a girl again?”

  That took Giulia by surprise. “I have the clothes I came in.”

  “Bah. Those are servant’s weeds. I will give you something better. Come, indulge me. It would give me pleasure to make you pretty.”

  Pretty. Giulia hesitated. Yesterday she’d despised her skirts, for they had seemed like Matteo’s proclamation of his mastery of her. But now she felt the pull of temptation: to be female again, free of the mask for a little while.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  Maria was summoned to bring a copper bathing tub, which she filled with hot water and scented with aromatic oils. Giulia sank into the delicious warmth, the chemise, which she still wore for modesty, billowing around her. Sofia unlaced her sleeves and rolled them up, and lathered Giulia’s hair with a foaming cake of scented soap, while Giulia washed her body with another. It was the greatest luxury she’d ever experienced. What would it be like to live this way—to grow so used to it, perhaps, that it ceased to seem extraordinary?

  Giulia climbed at last from the tub, gloriously clean but for the ingrained ink and charcoal on her hands, which even soap could not remove. She toweled herself dry and slipped on the fresh chemise Sofia gave her.

  From the painted chests against the wall Sofia drew an array of elaborate gowns, which she laid out on the bed for Giulia to inspect. Giulia chose the plainest, which was still finer than anything she’d ever imagined she might wear: a sleeveless underdress of russet silk, round necked to display the embroidered band of the chemise, and a high-waisted overdress of bronze brocade, its skirt split at the front so the underdress would show. Sleeves of the same brocade, loosely laced to the shoulders of the overdress, were held along their seams with more laces, leaving gaps through which Sofia teased the fabric of the chemise into decorative puffs.

  “This is an outdoor gown,” Sofia said. “On me it would be too long, unless I wore chopines. But you are taller than I, so for you it will do fo
r indoors.”

  “Chopines? What are those?”

  “A device with which the ladies of Venice delight in tormenting themselves.”

  Going to the chests, Sofia drew out the oddest footgear Giulia had ever seen: leather slippers fastened to wooden platforms more than a hand span high.

  “How in the world can anyone walk in those?”

  Sofia laughed. “It’s an art, learned with pain. There are laws to limit how high chopines can be, of course, just as there are laws to say how many yards of material may be used in a lady’s gown or a pair of men’s sleeves, or how many pearls may be sewn to a bodice. But we Venetians wink at such rules.”

  She tucked the chopines back into the chest, then settled Giulia once more on the hearth cushion and began to tease the tangles from her hair—exclaiming at the unevenness of it, for Giulia had kept it short by sawing it off with a knife. When it was smooth and nearly dry, Sofia combed it lightly with oil, then did complicated things with braids and pins and golden laces.

  “If you remain a girl, we can obtain a hairpiece to fill you out while you grow it again. I know an excellent supplier—he buys only from the convents, clean hair, free of vermin. There.” Sofia drew Giulia to her feet and stepped back, examining her handiwork. “You make a striking girl, just as you did a convincing boy.” She smiled her close-lipped smile. “In my trade, such flexibility could earn you a fortune.”

  “May I see?”

  “Of course.”

  Sofia fetched a hand mirror of silver-backed glass. Giulia held it before her face. How long had it been since she’d seen her own reflection? She barely recognized the person looking back at her: a long-necked girl with large dark eyes and smooth olive skin, her black tresses braided away from features too pronounced to be truly feminine: the nose too proud, the mouth too wide. Not the boy she had been until yesterday, with his shaggy hair falling over his cheeks; not the girl she’d been before that, with her simple plait and high-necked chemise. Someone else. Someone in between.

  “What do you think?” Sofia asked.

  “I hardly know myself.”

  “That was the intent. Now come. I have household duties to attend to. You will be more comfortable in my sitting room.”

  —

  The sitting room was just as Giulia remembered, with its attractive arrangement of tables and chairs and its writing desk in the corner. Sunshine flooded through the windows, printing lattices of light upon the floor. Between the sun and the fire, it was warmer than the bedchamber; but Giulia was wearing so much clothing she would not have been cold in any case. She’d thought she might feel like herself again, dressed in woman’s attire; but these tight, stiff garments were like nothing she had ever worn.

  She went to look at Bellini’s portrait of Sofia, but its fine details and glowing hues reminded her too sharply of what she had lost. She moved to stand instead before the windows. The cat, which had followed from the bedchamber, sprawled in the sun at her feet.

  Today was Tuesday: Giovedi Grasso, the last day of Carnival. In Palazzo Contarini Nuova, they would be preparing for the competition. Giulia thought of her painting in its hiding place in Ferraldi’s storeroom—the best work she had ever done, saturated with the blue that was not Humilità’s blue but instead was her own. It would never fulfill its intended purpose now—would never be placed beside the work of other painters and, perhaps, judged worthy.

  She looked down at her hands, at the black graining her fingers and bedded beneath her nails. A painter’s hands. Yet she was not a painter now. And if she was not a painter, what was she?

  The latch rattled. She turned, expecting Sofia—but it was Bernardo.

  She froze. So did he. An endless moment passed: he with his fingers still on the latch, she by the window. Then she gasped. Her hands flew to her face. She whirled away from him, as if that could conceal her.

  Silence. Then the door closed. Had he gone? No: She heard his footsteps. Then silence again. She stood rigid, her heart beating wildly, her face still bowed into her hands. If I wait, if I don’t move, surely he’ll go away again.

  He did not stir. The situation began to seem ridiculous. She was in his mother’s house—she couldn’t avoid him forever. Better to get it over with.

  She forced her hands to fall. She straightened her shoulders. She turned.

  He stood a few paces away, achingly familiar: his strong features, his sleek black hair, his elegant, impeccable clothing. His eyes were nailed to hers. Never in her life had she felt so exposed. The skin above the band of her chemise, where the tops of her breasts swelled over the tight lacing of the underdress, seemed to burn. It took all the will she had not to raise her arms and cover herself.

  “My mother guessed the truth about you.” His voice was harsh in the silence of the room. “I never did.”

  “I’m sorry” was all she could think to say.

  “I always suspected you were hiding something. But this—” He bit off the words. “I imagine you found my stupidity amusing. Were you laughing at me the entire time?”

  “No! No, never!”

  “Did you really think you would get away with it? That you’d never be found out?”

  “Of course I knew I might be caught. I thought about it every day. But no master painter would apprentice a girl. I had to become a boy. You know—I know you know—what it’s like to want something more than anything else, to fear you may never have it—”

  “What I want is reasonable at least.” His eyes were like black ice. “And I didn’t have to build a tower of lies to achieve it.”

  “No.” Anger flashed through her, sudden as a lightning bolt. “You only kept silent for years on end because you were afraid of what might happen if you spoke. Yes, I deceived you. Why would I not? I don’t owe you anything. You have no special claim on the truth. I never sought you out—all I wanted was to be left alone, but you came to me, and you kept coming back, and that was your choice, just as it was your choice to tell me it was your mother who sent you when really you were coming on your own. So I’m not the only liar, am I? And why did you lie? Why did you need an excuse to see me? Why would you even want to have anything to do with someone like me, with the person you thought I was? You have no right to be angry. None at all.”

  She stopped, breathing hard. He was staring at her, his lips a little parted. She waited for him to respond, to flash back. But he said nothing.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she went on, more quietly. “I did. But I was afraid you’d be angry or . . . or disgusted if you knew the truth. So I said nothing. And with every day that passed it became more impossible to speak.”

  “Why did you come here, then?” He gestured to the clothes she wore. “Without . . . your disguise?”

  “I was discovered. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

  Bernardo looked down at the cat, which had woken from its sunny nap and was twining around his ankles. “She said I must ask you.”

  He’d inquired about her, then. There was no way to know what that meant, or if it meant anything.

  “I told you the truth about my childhood,” she said. “About my father and my mother and how I grew up. But I was a seamstress, not a scullion. And I’m eighteen.” She felt a blush rising to her cheeks. “I thought it would better explain my voice and my lack of beard if I pretended to be younger. My father’s wife did banish me from the household after my father died, and I did apprentice in a painter’s workshop—except the workshop was in Padua, in the Convent of Santa Marta.”

  “A painter’s workshop?” His eyes flicked up, then down again. “In a convent?”

  “Yes. Perhaps the only one of its kind in all the world. My teacher was Maestra Humilità Moretti, and she was a genius . . .”

  She told him what she’d told Sofia, leaving out the same details. She hadn’t realized until she began to speak how much of her story he already knew, though she’d reshaped its bones to fit inside the skin of her disguise. Only Santa Marta was new to him, and M
atteo, and Passion blue. She expected him to interrupt, to ask questions, but he heard her out in silence, standing very still. The sun inched across the shining marble of the floor; the cat tired of Bernardo’s ankles and curled up to sleep again. Outside, life went on, but in this room the world had narrowed to the two of them.

  At last Giulia was finished. She could not read Bernardo’s expression. But at least he had listened.

  “I would have left you by the side of the road,” he said. “The night you found us. I would have sent you off into the dark.”

  “I know.”

  “What would you have done if I had? If my mother hadn’t taken pity on you?”

  “I would have gotten to Venice. Somehow.”

  He moved closer to the windows, gazing across the canal at the houses opposite.

  “I hardly know what to say to you. What you did—running away, disguising yourself . . .” He touched the glass, tracing the lattice that held it. “It’s like one of the tales my mother made up for me when I was a child.” He paused. “I don’t know if I could have done as much.”

  It surprised her that he would say such a thing.

  “What if he hadn’t found you? This Matteo Moretti. How long would you have continued in disguise?”

  “For as long as I could.”

  “Truly? To be . . . what you are not? For months or years, perhaps for all your life? Could you have borne that?”

  “I’m not certain,” Giulia said honestly. “But I would have tried.”

  He turned his head. He’d looked at her now and then while she spoke—brief, wary glances that skated swiftly across her face and then away. This time he did not drop his eyes. They moved on her mouth, her neck and bosom, slipped down to her waist and up again. Heat rose through her body, kindling her skin. Did he find her pleasing? Wasn’t this what she’d wished for—for him to see her, finally, as a man sees a woman? Yet all she wanted now was to twist away, to hide from that dark, searching gaze.